Hobbit Week: A Conversation With Andy Serkis, Creator of Gollum

When I had a chance to interview Andy Serkis last week, I was still in the midst of a nasty cold. So it seemed appropriate to be speaking with the very incarnation of Gollum just as my own voice was sounding a bit Gollum-y. Not that I tried to challenge Serkis to a Gollum-off. He would have beat me hands down. Phlegm down, too.

Serkis is now recognized as an innovating pioneer of performance capture acting. Once called merely “motion capture,” the process on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is now a more sophisticated technique than what was used on The Lord of the Rings a decade ago.

For the Rings trilogy, which was shot on film, Serkis acted his scenes on a separate sound stage and his digital performance was merged with the live action actors in post-production. With Weta Digital’s more robust “performance capture” system used in The Hobbit, Serkis (as Gollum) and Martin Freeman (as Bilbo) performed the “Riddles in the Dark” scene from beginning to end on the same set. Peter Jackson directed both two live actors, and Serkis’s slinky movements were recorded by his special suit’s sensors. Later, a digital character replaced Serkis, and animators enhanced and tweaked the performance data. But much of Gollum’s movements were, in fact, based on Serkis’s entire performance.

“Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that Gollum wasn’t gone.”

With his portrayal of Gollum in Rings, alongside his roles in King Kong, The Adventures of Tintin and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Serkis has come to define the art of motion capture performance. A stage actor as well, he’s also directed short films, worked in video games, and has founded his own London-based performance capture studio, The Imaginarium.

Another first for Serkis: He served as second unit director on Jackson’s Hobbit movies. The second unit typically shoots crowd scenes, landscapes, helicopter shots, action or fight scenes and other shots (close ups, pick ups) that usually don’t include the main actors. But for The Hobbit, which required 266 days to shoot all three films, the responsibilities of second unit was about as taxing as the main unit on other films.

I spoke with Serkis while he was in New York City, with other cast and crew from The Hobbit, to promote the film.

Gilsdorf: And great to speak with you. I’m a little sick. My apologies if I cough. I’m going to do my best to ask original questions. I imagine this must be interview 17 of 400 today.

Serkis: We’ve started in Wellington for the world premier and have been on he road since. Middle-earth is a universe I know very well.

Gilsdorf: When you finished with the three films of The Lord of the Rings, did you you just assume you would never return to Middle-earth again?

Serkis: I think even back as far as Lord of the Rings, there was always the chance that The Hobbit would be made, even way back then. Of course at that point, Peter Jackson didn’t probably think at that point that he’d be directing it. But somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that Gollum wasn’t gone. That he’d be still be rearing his head at some point. I thought that it might be done. So coming back it was really exciting when I got the call [telling me I'd get the role again].

“Gollum [has been] absorbed into the public consciousness. …For literally the first few takes, it was just like ‘Wow, I’m actually doing an impersonation of other people’s impersonations.’”

But there’s this very strange phenomenon of Gollum being absorbed into the public consciousness as much as he has from The Lord of the Rings. It has been very weird in that a lot of people had asked me to do Gollum’s voice, I did a lot of parodies, Saturday Night Live [and all that]. The strange thing was turning up on the set on the first day to do the “Riddles in the Dark” with Bilbo, which was the first thing to be shot in the movie, for literally the first few takes, it was just like “Wow, I’m actually doing an impersonation of other people’s impersonations.”

Gilsdorf: It’s as if Gollum is now in the public domain. This iconic character that you created is now entirely beyond your control.

Serkis: That’s right. But the great thing was that I got to act opposite Martin Freeman, and the way that Pete wanted to do the scene was to let it play almost like a piece of theater. We spent two weeks doing that scene, really every single take in its entirety. We shot it from lots and lots of different angles, but it gave Martin a chance to investigate the character of Bilbo. And it was a good thing for the crew and for Pete to start off with a known quantity, a lead character to start off on.

Gilsdorf: Motion capture at its core is the same, is my understanding, but the folks at Weta had improved it greatly since Lord of the Rings. Knowing the technology had gotten better, was there anything specific that affected the way you performed this time around? Perhaps you articulated your face in a new way because it would get picked up the the senors?

Serkis: No, not really. The technology has evolved obviously. One of the things that it has done is that it enables the actual moment of performance capture to happen on a live-action set, at the same time as the live action cameras are filming the live action actors. Whereas before, on The Lord of the Rings, my performance was filmed on 35 millimeter. And then [animators] had to go back and recreate some of that. Sometimes I’d have to go back and repeat the motion capture part of it. … With the evolution of the performance capture technology, now you can shoot on a live action set all in one hit. So you don’t have to go back and repeat anything. The driving of the digital avatar, facially and physically, all happens at the same time. So there’s no disconnect in the acting choices that you make between yourself and the other actors on the set. It’s all caught in the same moment, so it all feels very connected.

Gilsdorf: I recall in the making of The Lord of the Rings, there was a debate between key-frame animators and the motion capture people as to which would create a better Gollum. Now it seems that people are accepting your performance as the basis for what happens, for what we see on the screen.

“It’s all really about the authorship of the role.”

Serkis: That is the significant shift with performance capture as a whole. It’s all really about the authorship of the role. The big step in Lord of the Rings was, here’s an actor playing a role from page 1 to page 120, it’s the script, and you’re on a set and you’re being directed by a director. It’s not a committee decision arrived at by a team of animators… So really the debate of the authorship of the role is being cleared up in that respect. Now the visual effects teams work very strictly to [the performance]. Basically, the director shoots the scene and only when he’s happy with scene with the actors on the set does he then move on. And then when he’s cutting that whole performance together, he doesn’t actually see me [as CG] until eight months down the line. You cut the movie with my performance in place emotionally to get the structure and the pace and the emotional arc of the character and the journey and so on. … So the visual effects teams .. at Weta … have that understanding that it’s the performance of the actor.

Gilsdorf: So they don’t do too much tweaking of the performance, exaggerating, making the facial expressions more cartoonish, etcetera?

Serkis: That is a directorial choice as well. As a director myself, you can enhance a performance but you can’t change the underlying performance. And if you’re not feeling it on the day, if you’re not getting that performance on the day, then no matter how you adjust it or tweak, you’re not going to improve the actual underlying performance.

Yes, as you can with a live action film, you can put a [key light] in someone’s eyes, or stop them blinking, or do all manner of things to a live action performance. The same could be said for performance capture. It’s an aesthetic choice. For instance, in TinTin … there were moments when Steven Spielberg wanted someone to have their mouths open slightly wider, or [change] their expression. But that’s more of an aesthetic choice.

Serkis as the digital Gollum, in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)

Gilsdorf: As the preeminent motion capture actor at this point, do you think more and more films will be made this way? As an actor what is the future here? Do you think young actors should obtain special training in performance capture?

Serkis: In essence, it’s learning a skill, for sure, but the core work an actor does is the exactly the same. But it’s like leaning a skill. It’s like having to learn choreography, if you’re trying to dance in a movie, or learning a dialect. There’s certain rules. There’s a certain getting to understand the technology [which is] part of that skill. But in terms of playing the characters it’s exactly the same.

“Performance capture is a tool that young actors will need in the next 10, 20 years. … It’s not going away..”

For instance, back in the UK now, myself and actually my business partner, we have a performance capture studio called The Imaginarium. That’s been up and running for a year. We are training young actors, we have a troupe of young actors, who are just solid actors, who are just learning how, just going through the process, of playing avatars on the screen. We have a development arm for our studio. We have lots of projects which we are making in house… lots of film and video games… Performance capture is a tool that young actors will need in the next 10, 20 years. It’s on the increase, as you say. It’s not going away. People are no longer afraid of it. On the whole, the up and coming actors actually see it as a potential acting tool.

Gilsdorf: On The Hobbit, you made the transition to directing yourself — you directed the second unit for Peter Jackson. How did you learn that? Was there a fair amount of on the job training?

Serkis: I’ve been writing and wanting to direct for a long time. Back before The Lord of the Rings, I started to make short films. Peter was witness to some of those. Then after we made King Kong, I started to direct performance capture for some video games … and then The Imaginarium was starting to form … I was setting up to direct two or three films that were just coming to fruition really when Peter asked me [to accept the new role on The Hobbit]. Obviously, it was an extraordinary opportunity to work on a huge huge film and the second unit on these kind of films is pretty immense. It’s like another main unit. You have scenes with actors, and stunts, as well as aerials, battle sequences, and so on. We shot for 200 days on the second unit… Also, for me, I’d never shot for 3D before, and the new 48 frames per second technology. It that was part and parcel with the education. But Peter and I had a very open relationship. I would set the scenes up, he would give me notes, he would critique.

Peter Jackson, on the Bag End set (Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)

Gilsdorf: Has Peter changed much over the years? Before Lord of the Rings, he was a relatively unknown niche director of Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners. Then he turned the film industry in New Zealand on its head, and now he’s a megastar in his own right.

Serkis: He has not changed at all. He really hasn’t. I mean, other than the massive experience he’s had making the Lord of the Rings movies. and being a pioneer and pushing forward and doing things like 48 frames per second. He’s such a source of inspiration for me, he really is, as well as being a great friend. He is just such a compassionate and magnanimous director. It’s not in his nature to change in the sense that fame and fortune popped into his life.

“[Peter Jackson] has not changed at all.”

Gilsdorf: What surprised you the most — either as performer or as a director — being involved in The Hobbit?

Serkis: Something that I learned that I didn’t suspect? Before starting the Lord of the Rings trilogy, my direction in life was as a traditional actor. I was building on film after film project, making choices based on single characters, choosing scripts based on whether they were a great script, etcetera. My whole world has expanded in the fact that now I have a performance capture studio and my desire is to tell stories, but not just from a single character’s point of view. That was really reaffirmed on the back of shooting The Hobbit. That was quite a transitional film for me in that respect. I spent the course of a year and a half not acting and concentrating on directing. It was a journey that I think most actors, most active directors, cannot have. It ended up being a watershed jump for me.

“All the motivations of the character were really about notions of addiction, the schizophrenic personality, the way his body was racked and tortured by the thing he loved the most.”

Serkis: J.R.R. Tolkien? It didn’t really influence me. I suppose I was coming to Gollum, when I was creating the character from the first time around, with the notion of addict, of Gollum being an addict. Ravaged completely. I needed to have something real, something real to hook on so he wasn’t just this weird, strange creature. All the motivations of the character were really about notions of addiction, the schizophrenic personality, the way his body was racked and tortured by the thing he loved the most… So his voice is bound into his physicality. He was called Gollum because of the way he sounds, so finding that voice was all about the way he carried his pain and anxiety, and guilt over the killing of his cousin. That’s where the voice really emanates from. And from that physicality that came about, to tie the voice to the body. I was inspired by the action of my cat coughing up a fur ball as well.

Gilsdorf: The Hobbit takes place 60 years before The Lord of the Rings. Gollum is 60 years younger. Did you envision playing a different version of the character because of that?

Serkis: I had to forget everything that was facing him in The Lord of the Rings. He’s not being tortured by Sauron. The Sméagol part of his personality is absolutely thrilled to engage with Bilbo because he’s been on his own for the last 400 years in the Misty Mountains. So to have some company is very exciting. It’s just the Gollum side of his personality is really thinking more pragmatically about getting the next meal.

Gilsdorf: One more, a silly question. In the Led Zeppelin song, “Ramble On,” Robert Plant sings, “’twas in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair, but Gollum and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her, her, her, yeah.” What does Robert Plant mean by that? Any idea?

Serkis: I do know that one. I wish I could … I’ve heard of it. But I have had no idea. I suppose he’s taking about “her, her” — the precious?

Gilsdorf: Yeah, probably some reference to some girl. [Then there's long coughing fit] Sorry about that.

Serkis: I hope you feel better.

Gilsdorf: I do too. Thanks so much. It’s been wonderful speaking with you. I wish you all the best on the success of The Hobbit.

Serkis: Thank you very much.

Writer, journalist, poet and geek Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. More info fantasyfreaksbook.com or follow on Facebook fantasyfreaksbook .